Baruch November: After Bracha

My mother reminds me
I am named after
her grandma Bracha
who brought her sweet
poppy seed pastries.

Bracha mastered the parting
of childhood darkness—
making excellent stuffed
cabbage and strudel:
delicacies for the delicate heart.

***

Until dying, her husband, Yishiya,
held a great distaste for work
but peddled junk on the streets of Erie
in a horse-drawn wagon
instead of a truck— a mark
of shame on his family burning
like a streak left from a whip.

***

Bracha is the Hebrew word
for blessing. For its bearer,
a lot to live up to.

A version of the word begins
the blessing before a Jew eats,
even if the food is cold gruel,

even if the food prods memory:
a recipe from shtetls of
impaled mothers, children, scribes.

***

Bracha, a master seamstress,
made a yellow dress,
like an overturned buttercup
weaved with moonlight,
for my grandmother—an expert
complainer all her life,
who managed to degrade
the glowing outfit, calling it
old country fashion.

***

We read numerous
blessings in thanks:

A blessing for just being able
to arise in early pink-blue light.

A blessing for when lightning veins
a cloud or strikes the oak into flames.

A blessing for when the earth quakes:
sacred pictures of your family—
all you have left of them—
launching from the walls
into lethal puzzles of glass.

A blessing for the first time
the ocean spreads before you,
multitudes filling azure depths,
sunlight igniting tips of waves.

A blessing for the rare
beautiful creations:
the matriarchs Rachel and Sarah,
Queen Sheba of Ethiopia,
Queen Esther of Persia,
Tamar, daughter of David,
Yael, killer of Sisera,
Avishag, who pressed
her young body against
David in his dying days
just to keep him warm.

***

In ’54, her husband died.
Bracha moved in with her
daughter’s family in Pittsburgh.
She took care of everybody—
even the dogs, feeding them
cow brains they loved.

G-d stole much of her
family in pogroms—
still she kept kosher,
refusing to eat meat out.

This was the one
thing she carried
from a shtetl
called Pliskov.

***

Bracha drank hot water
with cherry jam for dessert,
turning the liquid to dark rubies—
warm sweetness erasing
memory for an instant.

***

Bracha also means to draw down.
When we bless our challah,
our livelihood, or the blowing
of the shofar, we draw G-d
to this world, says the Zohar,
like children calling to parents
out of the darkness.

***

Bracha later married a Jersey man
named Abe, who made a big deal
of promising her a wonderful life—

But hoarded every cent he had,
while she spoiled him with
kugels and apple pastries.

Abe died and left Bracha
nothing but the spite of
a single dollar in his will.

***

Sholom Shachna, Bracha’s father,
was the shtetl’s teacher.
He ensured Bracha read
and wrote Yiddish.

All her life, she loved
to correspond
with friends,
kept a notebook,
pale blue lines—
the normal color
of sky when clear
and heavy flames
do not whip
and wave out
of thatched roofs.

—–

Copyright 2025 Baruch November

Baruch November’s latest book of poems, The Broken Heart is the Master Key, is being released in August 2025. His previous book of poems is entitled Bar Mitzvah Dreams, and his first collection of poems, entitled Dry Nectars of Plenty, co-won BigCityLit’s chapbook contest. November’s works have been featured in ONE ART: a poetry journal, Tiferet Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Lumina, NewMyths.com, and The Forward. He serves as a host and organizer of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, and he has taught courses in Multicultural American Literature, Shakespeare, poetry, and writing at Touro University in Manhattan.